Apparently, crypto markets have been squirmy since the last few days as global positions against this virtual asset were drawn lower in-line with smaller assets like Ripple, EOS and Ethereum.
The reason for the down-sizing in value of Bitcoin is old tormentors at play again, Money laundering and Hacking, plaguing and dissuading traders of these assets, according to security firm CipherTrace latest reports.
Nearly All Top Cryptos Drop Prices
Across the board, Major Cryptocurrencies like ETH, Ripple ,EOS,TRX and ADA have continued to see price fluctuations with no clear direction yet, apparently fearing fresh wave of crypto thefts as reported by news agency Reuters lately.
In recent market activity, bitcoin had stabilized in terms of price band-width after the deluge that swept away value of the asset back in June-July on the back of theft reports in Korea and nearby market regions.
It appears that, the same may repeat this time around as well, given that prices of bitcoin had just reached $7,500 thereabouts.
CipherTrace reports thefts
Traders appeared to be “spooked” by CipherTrace reports. The report reveals that in 2018 $927million valued cryptocurrencies were stolen at exchanges/trading platforms, while in 2017 it was a mere $266 million.
Chief executive officer, Dave Jevans, says, “The regulators are still a couple of years behind because there are only a few countries that have really applied strong anti-money laundering laws.” The security expert who also heads the Anti-Phishing Working Group said that the firms report was only half of the total number of such thefts in real-time.
2018 has been a big year in terms of crypto crimes and there have multiple formats which hackers have chosen to experiment. One of the largest targets has been bitcoin.
Bitcoin which is the oldest of this generation of digital peer-to-peer payment systems has seen huge value growth in the period 2016-2017. However, 2018 has been a troubled year for not only this asset but for the nearly 1,600 other coins and tokens as well.
Hence, as per CipherTrace the fear of crypto crimes, especially theft is an alarming 250 percent along with money laundering, criminal activities.
More regulation is needed
The speculation about regulation of markets has once again gained momentum. Experts propose that regulation could be the means to ensure bitcoin prices remain steady. Regulation would help to create the bandwidth such that prices would operate in the same bandwidth.
At the same time there is speculation that regulation could have a negative impact as well. However, this would be only a short term impact suggest most industry specialists. In the long term prices would stabilize and there would be an overall market condition which will allow trading without fear of loss or theft of trader accounts at exchanges!
